Lenovo Z6 Pro review

A penta-camera full of goodies

The Lenovo Z6 Pro has one very interesting camera setup at the back. In addition to the familiar ultrawide/primary/tele trio, the Z6 Pro also packs a 2MP dedicated video camera for nighttime videos and a 3D ToF camera to help the autofocus and in portrait mode.

Let's start from the beginning though. There are four vertically aligned cameras on the Lenovo Z6 Pro. Starting top to bottom you get a 16MP shooter behind f/2.2 12mm lens for ultrawide images. It supports autofocus and can go as close as 2cm for some high-res macro pictures. There is no distortion correction available.

Following is the 48MP primary snapper with 0.8µm pixels behind f/1.8 28mm lens. It produces 12MP images, and while you can opt to save a 48MP one, it's just an upscaled image from the 12MP output.

Third one is the 8MP shooter behind f/2.4 56mm lens for telephoto snaps. It gives you 2x optical zoom over the regular camera. Oddly, the saved images are 12MP, so we guess some upscaling is happening here and we can't think of any reason why it was needed.

Finally, fourth is a 2MP imager with large 2.9µm pixels behind f/1.8 lens. It is the only one with optical stabilization and is used only for shooting videos in suboptimal conditions, though you can switch to it at any time by going for Night or Sport Video.

Next to the dual-LED flash is a 3D ToF camera, which is currently used to help the autofocus for closer subjects and for a depth-sensor when shooting portraits.

The camera app seems very simple to use. There is nothing on the viewfinder but a zoom shortcut. Hitting the More shortcut (three dots) shows HDR options, filters, and advanced settings.

Just above the virtual shutter is the mode selector, which contains Pro (manual mode with up to 1/4s shutter speed), Night, Portrait, Panorama, Wide, and Macro. The last two are basically shortcuts to the Ultrawide-angle camera.

The zoom selector is a nightmare to use. Once you tap on it, it will reveal a tiny scrubber that is nowhere near comfortable to use. Unfortunately, this is the ONLY way to go to the telephoto snapper. And this might explain why the images are upscaled to 12MP. We hope Lenovo adds a native shortcut via a future update and allow for saving the original 8MP shots.

Camera app

Image quality

The 12MP images from the default (48MP) camera are flagship-grade. The detail is very high, and the foliage presentation is excellent. The colors are true to life, the contrast is as high as it can get, and the dynamic range is impressive as well. The pictures are sharp though we didn't observe any excessive over-sharpening.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP camera samples

There is an option to save a so-called 48MP super picture, but there is nothing super about it. The image is simply an upscaled version of the 12MP shot, so there are no benefits to using this mode. That's probably why it was put in the extra settings menu.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 48MP samples

The tele camera is only 8MP, but the photos to come out of it are 12MP. The only way to get the app to switch to this shooter is to use the zoom scrubber or pinch on the screen. There are separate Wide and Macro modes, which spit 16MP, but there isn't a 2X zoom selector on the Lenovo Z6 Pro.

The good news is the daylight telephoto images are excellent and you can't really tell those were upscaled a bit even when pixel-peeping. They have plenty of detail and match the colors, contrast, and the dynamic range of the regular photos.

When there isn't enough light, the phone won't use this shooter at all and will instead do digital zoom from the main camera.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP zoomed photos

Now, let's check the ultrawide-angle camera. There is enough detail at the center of the photos (unless it's something complex that won't come out right), while the corners are a bit blurred and distorted. This is to be expected with such cameras, though. There is no distortion correction to counter the curved buildings.

The color rendition is a bit cooler than it should be and isn't a match for the main camera. Not that it's bad, but it's not as true to reality.

Finally, the dynamic range is often superb and a match for the regular stills.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 16MP ultrawide photos

The ultrawide cam can also do for macro shots. If you move the phone too close to a subject the camera app will automatically switch to Macro. But you can also do it manually from the Mode selector. These are quite good in quality and will do for the occasional shooting of flower petals, bugs, and other tiny peculiar things. Yes, blurred corners and chromatic aberration are still noticeable here and there, but nothing that worrisome.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 16MP macro photos

Now, let's see what happens when night falls. The regular cameras insist on firing the HDR when working in low-light and we recommend leaving HDR Auto as is. Otherwise, the photos come out noisy and not very pleasant to look at. And the good news is the impact on the saving time is minor if any.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP low-light non-HDR photos

So, the HDR night photos from the regular camera turned out quite fine with realistic exposure and enough detail even in more complex areas such as foliage. No matter the occasion, the Z6 Pro shot a very nice photo even in the darkest of places.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP low-light HDR photos

There is Night mode for the main camera, it takes only a second to snap a shot, and the photos are amazing. The pictures we took with the Night Mode easily rival Huawei's but they do come way faster.

In Night Mode the Z6 Pro captures plenty of light and the nighttime images do pop-up nicely. The noise is kept low, there are almost no blurred people or cars, and the only area where those are a bit lacking is the sky.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP Night Mode photos

As we mentioned a few paragraphs ago, the tele camera isn't working when the light is low. Instead, you'd get a digitally cropped and zoomed 12MP photos from the main camera.

The photos from the ultrawide cam are quite bad. The noise levels are high, and the resolved detail is far from impressive, often smeared by the noise-reduction algorithm. Surely, those are somewhat usable, but you should stick to using the regular camera during the night. It does splendidly.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 16MP ultrawide low-light samples

And when you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Lenovo Z6 Pro stacks up against the competition.

12MP: Lenovo Z6 Pro against the Xiaomi Mi 9T and the OnePlus 7 in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The Lenovo Z6 Pro has five cameras but only two are involved when taking portraits - the main 48MP one and the ToF snapper. You can choose the blur strength (between 1 and 10, 5 is the default). No other crazy lighting effects are available.

The subject separation in the portrait shots we took is great, among the best we've encountered on a smartphone. The resolved detail is great, the blurred backgrounds looked nice and it didn't really matter if the subject was close or not that close. Very busy and complex backgrounds may fool the algorithm, but still - the ToF snapper does an excellent job in providing the depth map.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 12MP portraits

Selfies

The Lenovo Z6 Pro's selfie camera has the impressive 32MP resolution and an f/2.0 lens, though it lacks autofocus like the majority of these snappers. This particular camera uses pixel-binning and it saves 8MP images. There is no option to shoot in full 32MP.

The 8MP selfies we snapped with the Lenovo Z6 Pro turned out very good when there was enough light. The detail is enough, the contrast and colors are great, while the dynamic range is about the average. But we expected a bit more detail and sharpness from samples that were taken with a 32MP sensor though.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 8MP selfies

Portrait mode is available on selfies, too, and surprisingly it turned out to be a pretty good one on the Z6 Pro. The subject separation is very decent, and the background blur is quite nice.

Lenovo Z6 Pro 8MP portrait selfies